Guest guest Posted December 16, 2006 Report Share Posted December 16, 2006 On the MIR space station, they had mold that was eating glass, plastic and metal. Or so I heard... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 16, 2006 Report Share Posted December 16, 2006 As hard to believe as this sounds (eating glass) I will also acknowledge the existence of known rock eaters. Lichens actually digest the surface of the rocks they live on. Lichens are a symbiote, a mutual pairing of a fungus and an algae. http://ohioline.osu.edu/sc195/029.html Some are edible, some are toxic. I once worked with the analytical team in Huntsville that evaluated some of the space station organisms (and they still do). I will have to ask them about the glass eaters and see what they know about that. These are the kinds of organisms they have to work very hard to NOT take them to places like Mars, when they send rovers and other robots to go exploring. Z --- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...> wrote: > > On the MIR space station, they had mold that was eating glass, plastic and > metal. > Or so I heard... > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 16, 2006 Report Share Posted December 16, 2006 That would be great! I would be very interested in hearing about this straight from the horses mouth, as it were.. Are they mycologists, or exobiologists.. or ?? MSFC has an interesting history, being the place where Werner Von Braun and all the other ex-Nazi scientists were brought after we saved them from being brought elsewhere... And of course, the rest is history.. He was certainly instrumental in bringing us to the Moon. We need to study the MIR experience because we do NOT want that experience to be repeated on other long space missions. You know, thinking about it (it was so long ago) it might have been plexiglass. I remember the part about it pitting metal. And the plastic which was especially problematic with wire insualation. (I don't know if it ate Teflon!) It was the most destructive mold you could imagine and many people at the time were theorizing that the mold had mutated in the space environment, which is actually not implausible.. On 12/16/06, zcat1956 <zcat1956@...> wrote: > > As hard to believe as this sounds (eating glass) I will also > acknowledge the existence of known rock eaters. Lichens actually > digest the surface of the rocks they live on. Lichens are a symbiote, > a mutual pairing of a fungus and an algae. > http://ohioline.osu.edu/sc195/029.html > Isn't that cool! > Some are edible, some are toxic. > I once worked with the analytical team in Huntsville that evaluated > some of the space station organisms (and they still do). I will have > to ask them about the glass eaters and see what they know about that. > These are the kinds of organisms they have to work very hard to NOT > take them to places like Mars, when they send rovers and other robots > to go exploring. > Z > > > > > On the MIR space station, they had mold that was eating glass, > plastic and > > metal. > > Or so I heard... > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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